The Day After...

....Thanksgiving. It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving has come and gone. The weather here has been cold and crisp at night, but is balmy and sunny today. It was an enjoyable holiday, filled with all kinds of good things to eat. Oh, yeah and family too. ;-) I had a good time, visiting and catching up with everyone. The food was excellent and while Mom prepared the main course---Turkey, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Corn and Pumpkin Pie, 'us girls' brought a few other side dishes. Dressing from my sister, cheesy spinach potatoes from my niece and rolls and cornbread salad from me. Since my great niece was born near Thanksgiving, my sister also brought birthday cake.


The only problem with all that food, is once you fill your plate up, it seems that it's impossible to stuff it all down, even though it tastes so good. The eyes are always bigger than the stomach, I think. However there were lots of leftovers packed up and sent home with everyone. A good day all in all.


Black Friday is being spent at home. I doubt you could pay me enough to get out there amongst that crowd. As I said the weather is shirt sleeves warm and it's so nice to see the sun shining. Today has been busy though, with trying to get the house tidied up some, and then settling down to do some 'Black Friday' shopping of my own on the Internet. Time to get Christmas gifts ordered and decided on. I made good headway, and hope to go to the big city next week to finish up. I'm finding it hard to realize that Christmas is just 'around the corner'.

Jama and Jim from over at Prosperine came over around noon to pick up Selena and Jackdaw. I had sorted out the three other ewes from his breeding group and released them to the rest of the flock, and then penned those two in the barn. They were in separate stalls to preserve Selena's sanity, since Jackie knew there is another ewe in season, just couldn't find her. (She's in the main flock). They weren't able to stay long, but we had a nice visit all the same, they are just real nice folks, and came bearing gifts of goat cheese and some lovely potholders and a plate (with sheep on them even!). Loading up went smoothly and lots of animal crackers helped soothed Selena's nerves. I told Selena I would miss her and Jackie that I would not miss him. It sounds like Jackie found a new girlfriend pretty much as soon as his hooves hit the ground at his new home.



Then later in the afternoon....the catty shack finally came! At a loss on where to keep the kittens safely through the winter, I've been wracking my brain to come up with something. They have their nice little pen in the garage, but they needed a good indoor shelter. Ideas from enclosing the breezeway, to buying a storage building went through my mind. However enclosing the breezeway would have to be done by myself, and at this time of the year, I would have to be nuts to start a project like that. It would also take me forever to complete. Storage buildings are expensive and lack windows. Then one night an idea came to me...what about a little travel trailer? Well, I prayed about it, and thought about it, and I had a real peace about one being provided. I looked at the want ads, on Craigslist and Yahoo lists. Nothing in my price range. So I ran a little blurb on the local town's Yahoo "Daily Deals" site.

I was so excited when I got an email within a day. A lady had a travel trailer--14 foot---for-sale for a really good price. The caveat was it was 'filthy'. Well, I can deal with filthy...so almost a week later, through trying to arrange times to view the trailer, it finally came 'home'. The people I bought it from were so nice. They have a farm, an orchard and a love of animals as well. It really felt right, and I was able to add in some extra money to have them tow it over. The lady that did the driving is a truck driver so she was able to maneuver the driveway, curves, and gates and back the little critter right into where I wanted it!

Right now it's blocked on concrete, but my Dad is going to help me jack it up and get more blocks under it so the wheels are off the ground, then also we can level it.

It really is filthy with the major problem being a mouse invasion at some point. I'm cleaning it with gloves and mask on and have gotten quite a bit of debris picked up already. An older man lived in it and had it outfitted with all the necessities. From what I understand he had to go to a nursing home where he later died, and it looks like they pretty much just took the essentials and left a mess behind. The trailer looks like it was not filthy though when it was in use, just accumulated dirt and mouse debris since.

I plan to tear out the carpet, most of the bed area and some of the seat area. I'm pretty sure they are not the originals and I'd like to get as much of that stuff out as I can, so I can clean it really good. It'll have to be cleaned from stem to stern and disinfected.

I'll post before pictures in a few days...and hopefully after ones soon. I plan to move the kitty playpen up next to it, and fix one of the windows so they can go outside or stay in. Eventually some of the kittens will come inside to live in the house, maybe some to a new home, and some may be outside kitties when the time comes in the Spring----once they are sensible enough to be around Boone. This will give me some time though to be able to make proper decisions so that I can quite worrying about the little rats, er cats.

Once the kittens are done with the trailer, then, I'm going to work on doing some restoration on it, and eventually turn it into a little wool room. Maybe. It's silly, but I'm pretty excited about it all. Probably by the time I clean the mess out though, I'll be less excited!